SUMMARY:

In his reaction to Mark Lipovetsky’s essay, Vladislav Zubok suggests that the Soviet intelligentsia was not a second version of the prerevolutionary one and warns against treating the Soviet educated classes epiphenomenally. Similarly, post-Soviet Russian intellectuals differ drastically in their environment from Soviet ones. Zubok also argues that the “binary concepts” and “essentialist thinking” of the Soviet intelligentsia criticized by Lipovetsky are part of any politics, and conceptual vehicles such as class, gender, or nation are important for political mobilization. Zubok also wonders about the lack of patriotism among contemporary Russian liberals and connects the absence of political nationalism or patriotism among the intelligentsia to the specific conditions of the post-Stalin USSR. For Zubok, even the political nation of “rossiiane” requires a culture of affection. He contends that the historical lesson for the Russian intelligentsia lies in its inability to bridge the gap to the millions of supporters of Vladimir Putin. Finally, Zubok argues that although the Soviet intelligentsia did not generate its own postructuralism or participate in the Western strand of it, this did not present a uniform phenomenon. Zubok describes the diversity of this intelligentsia as underwritten by the “universalist humanism” of the Russian tradition, from the religious-philosophical writers of the Silver Age to the formalists. Finally, Zubok argues that Russian intellectuals cannot limit themselves to cultural politics if they desire political relevance.